The Eric Parker Story

From the files of Peter Haining this draft of a piece by W.O.G. ('Bill') Lofts on the great Sexton Blake illustrator Eric Parker (1898 - 1974). It was published in the early 1980s in the Australian magazine Collector's Digest.

The Eric Parker Story.

By W.O.G. Lofts.

For over twenty years, it was my good fortune and privilege to meet many Directors, Editors, sub-editors, authors, and artists, not only down Fleet Street, but in the home of it all at Fleetway House in Farringdon Street, the home of the mighty Amalgamated Press. I use the expression 'fortune' in the sense, that living in London, it was quite easy for me to make these short trips.

Always firmly believing in sharing information with others not so fortunate, I used to write up many of these events in the various magazines circulating at the time. Nearly all personalities I'm glad to say, freely gave me information not only about themselves, but about the papers they were connected with in pre-war days. Papers that gave so much pleasure to us, as they do even today in some cases over a half a century later. Indeed, in time by so many meetings, many became good friends, when they probably gave me real inside information, that they would not have revealed to the ordinary interviewer. The very sad fact today, is that with all of them considerably older than myself-practically the majority of them have now passed on.

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A – Z of Science Fiction words

A useful guide to scientific words for the Science Fiction enthusiast. It first appeared as monthly instalments in Authentic Science Fiction and was printed and published as a booklet by Hamilton & co., in the Goldhawk Road, London W 12. It was compiled by H.J. Campbell. Being 1954 very little is related to computers. At C you will find Cybernetics and at B Betelgeuse...

Absolute. Not relative. Independent of all scale and comparisons. E.g., zero temperature, number, the speed of light.

Acceleration. Rate of change of velocity. Increasing velocity is positive acceleration; decreasing velocity is negative acceleration. The average acceleration of any body falling to Earth in a vacuum is 32 feet per second per second.

Achromatic. Applied to optical apparatus which gives images free from colored fringes. A. lenses have one sense of crown glass and one of flint glass. The flint lens corrects dispersion caused by the crown glass.

Aerolite. (Sometimes called ‘aerolith’). A stony meteorite, as distinct from a metallic one. A meteorite that is a mixture of stone and metal, but preponderantly stone would be called aerolithic.

Albedo. A measure of the brightness of celestial bodies that shine by reflected light. Technically, it is the amount of light a body reflects in proportion to the amount that falls on it. The Moon’s albedo is 7%; that of Venus 65%.

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Norman Lindsay Does Not Care – an Outburst

A pamphlet found in a Fanfrolico Press book The Antichrist of Nietzsche illustrated by Australian artist Norman Lindsay. Printed about 1927 it is by his great champion P.R. Stephensen who was a friend of Lindsay's son Jack. Stephensen (1901-1965) was known as 'Inky' and was a curious figure, starter of many presses including Mandrake and something of a left wing firebrand who moved to the far right in his middle years. Here he is in his late twenties ranting in full épater le bourgeois mode:

Norman Lindsay Does Not Care
An Outburst
by
P. R. Stephensen

Fanfrolico Pamphlets No. I
Price One Farthing

Why should Norman Lindsay care if suburbia shudders with a horror which is really terror of his stark and ruthless presentation of the image of beauty? Nothing else could be expected, for at this level criticism remains atavistically moral, tribal; and any artist making a vital expression is likely to be regarded as a spawn of Satan, Antichrist, lewd and wicked, abhorrent to all Right-Thinking People. Norman Lindsay does not care how loudly the Good People howl for his suppression. But the Ofﬁcial Art Mob (or Mobs) also dislike him, with the intensity of a fascination which repels as it attracts. And as these quite sophisticated persons officially disown Suburbia, it is difficult for them to damn the man in Suburbia’s phrasing. Yet they must do something about it, because his work is by contrast a continual exposure of their own artistic ineptitude and moral vacuity. So they seek to explain him away, ostrich principle.
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Two manifestoes from The Idler

At Jot we try to print as many manifestoes as possible. Here are two manifestoes from The Idler. One of them is (or was) available on a tea towel from the Idler's website. The Idler book from 2014 has a friendly and combative interview with Jeremy Paxman and a good article about the history of attempts to shorten the working week, reminding us how working men once had to struggle to get a 10 hour day…Now we have the amazing Timothy Ferriss and his 4-Hour Workweek but so far no manifesto. The style of the 'Death to Supermarkets' rant is reminiscent of Blast, the brainchild of that well known boulevardier Wyndham Lewis…

More rants and manifestoes to follow.

The Agamemnon Dinner of November 1900

Found among a large collection of menus printed at the turn of the nineteenth century by the high class Cambridge printer W.P.Spalding is this menu for the annual ‘Agamemnon Dinner’ of the famous Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, which was held at King’s College on 27th November 1900.

A copy of this particular menu, signed by some who attended the Dinner, is in the King’s College archives. It shows that the medievalist M.R.James, a good amateur actor who enjoyed reciting his famous ghost stories at ADC events, was present at the Dinner, along with A.A.Milne, then in his Fresher year. All the menus reflect the high gastronomical standards of the various Cambridge colleges at that time, but the dishes on offer at the Agamemnon Dinner seem particularly delicious.

James and Milne could choose from starters that included Potage Dauphine served with an amontillado, Turbot boulli, sauce crevettes and filet de sole a la Villeroi which came with a liebfraumilch, perdrix aux choux, or petites timbales a la Royale, which were served with a 1894 Champagne Irroy.

The main courses consisted of Boeuf pique a la Godard, Oison Roti, sauce aux pommes, celery a l’Espagnoles, haricots verts, pommes de terre en croquettes et Oakley.

Or they might prefer Langue de Boeuf a la Ecarlate with puree d’Epinards.

Dessert number one came in the form of ‘Pouding A.D.C.’ or Bavarois au Curacao.

Then there were liqueurs offered with Glace au pain bis a la Jamaique..

Then, rather bizarrely, came Croutes d’ Anchois ( marinated fish towards the end of a meal; I wonder if this was ever popular). And finally, another Dessert (not specified), after which came port and coffee.

Personally, I could happily scoff the lot—apart from the anchovies, obviously, although I’d want to know what potato croquettes ‘et Oakley’ exactly meant. [RR]

The Diary of A Dining-Out Man

From Virtual Victorian

From a volume of Bentley's Miscellany (London, 1841)- this piece by Albany Poyntz (i.e. Catherine Gore) other contributors to this volume included Ainsworth, Crowquill, Ingoldsby & Longfellow. She also wrote A World of Wonders (Richard Bentley, London 1845) - a polymathic work refuting popular superstitions with chapters on Pope Joan, Wild Women, Sybils, Monstrous Births and Ventriloquism etc.,. The full text can be found at Project Gutenberg.

Catherine Gore (1799 - 1861) is best known for her many "silver-fork" novels, which depicted fashionable high society. In 1830, she published her first silver-fork novel, Women As They Are, or Manners of the Day, and then went on to write many more books in this popular genre that provided her with a considerable income. There is much on her at The Corvey Novels Project (Nebraska) She was known as a bright conversationalist, an attribute that also displayed itself in the dialogue in her novels. Her writing is often compared to Jane Austen's, particularly her descriptions of the "heartless society mother" in various novels. In this piece The Diary of A Dining-Out Man, which she writes as 'Albany Poyntz' the extreme worldliness of tone prefigures Saki. It is a world she would have known - she was herself at one time very rich but was swindled out of £20,000, and had to write several more society novels to recoup.

DIARY OF A DINING-OUT MAN.
BY ALBANY POYNTZ.

So, here we are in the season again. — Goodness be praised ! — Those country houses take too much out of a man, in return for what he extracts from them. It is well enough in those where one has the ear of the house, as well as the run of the house, — remaining a fixture, while successive parties of guests appear and disappear; for the same bon-mots and good stories serve to amuse his Grace on Friday, which were tried upon the country-neighbour party with success, the preceding Monday, — as inoculation was attempted upon criminals, before the royal family were submitted to the prick of the lancet. More particularly when the whole set has been renovated. It is a bore to have some single gentleman, or stationary souffre douleur cousin, on the watch for the point of every well-worn anecdote,–like people at a pantomime, familiar beforehand with the tricks. Still, even when one makes a hit, the wear and tear of the thing is prodigious. One goes through the work of three dinners per diem ; — to wit, breakfast, luncheon, and dinner, — and all without refreshment ! In town, one has the chance of the clubs and morning visits to brighten one. But in a country house, where one can only rub up per aid of the new works and periodicals lying on the table, or visits shared in common with the rest of the party, one must fall back on one's own resources, — and the effort is prodigious.

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Solomon Pottesman—book dealer as metaphysician

Solomon Pottesman ( 1904 – 78) was one of the best known ‘ characters’ in London’s post-war world of antiquarian book dealing. Socially awkward, often exasperating in the eyes of auction staff, such as O.F.Snelling, who paints a rather uncharitable picture of him in his Rare Books and Rare People, he was more appreciated by fellow bibliophiles like Alan Thomas, who not only enjoyed his company, but like so many other dealers and collectors, thoroughly respected his encyclopaedic knowledge of incunabula. Indeed, so expert in his field, was Solomon, that he was almost universally known as ‘Inky’.

So, in 1960, when Pottesman announced that he had just published a book, everyone assumed that this would be a wonderfully scholarly work on pre-1500 printing and publishing. Imagine the disappointment when those few friends and colleagues who Pottesman honoured with a complimentary copy of the book in question received a slim unpaginated pamphlet in blue card covers, and printed at his own expense, entitled Time and the Playground Phenomenon. This turns out to be an exploration of Space, Time and Memory elicited by the author’s shock, twenty years earlier , on returning to the school playground he had left aged 14 to discover that it ‘ HAD SHRUNK TO A FRACTION OF ITS FORMER SELF’ (his block capitals). Seemingly of a philosophical turn of mind (another trait of which his acquaintances were unaware), Pottesman became so obsessed with this phenomenon, that he resolved to explore it. He had already rejected as fallacious the more obvious explanation that he had grown and’ as a consequence, the playground seemed small’ by rightly arguing that the other haunts of his childhood that he had revisited had not also diminished in size.

Pottesman then embarks on a quasi phenomenological theory in which he brings to his argument such learned commentators as Lucretius, Darwin, Kant, Taine, William James and Pavlov. His central premise is that the MEMORY of that playground had grown with him as a static ‘cut-out’ which through the years becomes a sort of unmodified hallucination. With physical growth, this memorised image grows larger and thus when time plays a part and the actuality is later revisited it seems much smaller compared with the memorised image.

‘Time is revealed as subjective in that the object is growing smaller in, and relative to, space-with-time, or consciousness of the percipient, but, by this very process, phenomenal time is shown to depend on the identical object indifferent to perception, the subjective and objective are revealed as a synthesis, and time is shown to be inseparable from the duration of objects’ (author’s bold type).

It is easy to understand why the no nonsense Snelling, who was more interested in devising accurate catalogue entries, and who wrote at least one book about boxing, would have dismissed Inky’s philosophical explorations as the worst kind of solipsism. But it is unlikely that any of Pottesman’s other colleagues would have felt any different. Some might have been a little embarrassed. I would like to think that one or two who received a copy of his book, which I was sent gratis by a dealer not long ago, were rather impressed. [RMH]

The illustration above is of one of his greatest finds - a stationer's list - for a quarto edition of Shakespeare's (possibly) lost play Love's Labour's Won'.

Charles Hamilton and ‘The Modern Boy’

Found among the extensive papers of Peter Haining this article on an old magazine for boys The Modern Boy by the late Tom Ebbage, an Australian book collector also known as Harry Wharton and part of a long gone Sydney 'hobby circle.' The article appeared in the defunct magazine Golden Hours in 1987.

"THE MODERN BOY" - AHEAD OF ITS TIME

- Tom Ebbage

  As we all know, Charles Hamilton with the help of a number of "substitute" authors, wrote most of the Greyfriars and St. Jims school stories in the "Magnet" and the "Gem" commencing in 1907 and 1908.

  From February 1915 until April 1926 he also wrote nearly all of the 524 Rookwood school stories which appeared in "The Boy's Friend". Thus for over eleven years he kept three different schools going simultaneously, which was a remarkable task.

  When the Rookwood school saga concluded in 1925 he was allowed only a little less than two years to concentrate on the Greyfriars and St. Jims stories. Then on 11th February 1928 commenced THE MODERN BOY, and from the first issue, and with some intervals, Charles Hamilton wrote so many different yarns in this paper, that it could truly be said that he was the leading author in three different "companion papers" until they terminated in 1939 and 1940.

  Hamilton began his career in THE MODERN BOY with “King of the Islands”, a stirring yarn of adventure by air, land and sea. In all, C.H. wrote 209 stories of Ken King, and they made absorbing reading matter for the boys of the time. From September 1937 until February 1938, Hamilton wrote a series of Stories of "The Rio Kid", which were western adventures.

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Salvage (1942)

A piece of ephemera from Dad's Army days in Kent during WW2 (1942). A sheet of mimeographed paper typed both sides from the Tenterden 'Salvage Officer,' one G.D. Forder. Possibly such leaflets were from a national template, although no record of this leaflet is forthcoming. Bones were much wanted (even if gnawed by a dog) - these could be used in making glycerine (for high explosives) also candles and soap.
Salvage has now become recycling and generally they don't refuse bones but no longer solicit them.

Tenterden Rural District Council

Hillside
5 East Hill
Tenterden Kent.
6th May, 1942.

G. D. Forder,
Salvage
Officer.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Salvage.

Salvage is vitally important.
Shipping is limited an many supplies formally drawn from the Far East and other countries have been cut off. So we must utilise to the utmost every bit of material which can possibly be got at home.

Local Authorities everywhere have been urged to arrange for its collection. Their resources of man power and equipment are fully taxed, and other overtaxed, and need to be supplemented by voluntary help.

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P.J.Proby

Who remembers P.J.Proby? He was that twenty something, good looking Texan, born James Marcus Smith, who with his jet black hair tied back an energetic, gyrating act and hit single covers from West Side Story ( 'somewhere there’s a place for us…) was the sensational new male vocal act in 1965---a sort of Elvis lookalike, but with a better voice, many thought, than the King of Rock himself. Then he split his pants, not once but twice, and was banned from the BBC and from just about every venue in the UK. By then he had a fleet of Rolls Royces a yacht and Lear Jet and homes in Beverley Hills and Chelsea, but nowhere to sing, at least in the UK, which had become his adopted home.

Frustrated, he still recorded the odd album, and once the split pants furore had died down, he took to the stage in various musicals. Before too long, however, he had an alcohol problem and a failed marriage. The cars and properties were liquidated, but he continued to sing and act, most notably playing Elvis. But the drinking continued. Other marriages went under. His lowest point came in 1985, according to a cutting from a magazine collected by Peter Haining, when he was snapped in his Bolton bedsit slumped on a sofa clutching a can of Special Brew—still just 47,but hardly recognisable as the sleek mid sixties sex symbol. By then he was reduced to gigs in northern clubs, but with a reputation as a ‘no show’. Haining seems to have been fascinated by the singer’s fall from grace, because he also archived a special Sunday Times Proby supplement of 1965, when the singer was at his height.

Amazingly, Proby refused entirely to go under, performing and recording as he needed to, proving his versatility by doing covers of two punk rock classics in the late eighties. The most astonishing departure must be his recording of Eliot’s Waste Land in 1999—perhaps not so remarkable when one considers that the Harvard educated poet grew up in St Louis, which is not so too far away from Proby’s home town of Houston. By this time the singer had cleaned up his act and had settled in Evesham, Worcestershire (which he pronounced 'Woostershire' ), in a house surrounded by five acres, he having in a later interview confessed that he hated cities and was a country boy at heart. However, disaster struck in 2012, when the seventy-four year old was brought to court on a charge of benefit fraud. Indignant at the very notion, he defended himself, arguing that any benefits he received were due to him as someone who suffered from alcoholism and a disability sustained while playing American Football.

He was acquitted, though he afterwards confessed that the whole affair had forced him to downsize to a bungalow in the hamlet of Twyford, in prime apple growing country just north of Evesham, where he still lives, his garden peopled with totem poles and palms planted in large pots. This year Proby will be 77. He still belts out the old R & B classics and though, despite the prominent sideburns, he would now win no prizes as an Elvis lookalike, the voice, which back in 1965, was regarded by many in the know as one of the most powerful in pop, is undiminished. [R.R.]

John C Felgate

From the L.R. Reeve* collection this piece about a distinguished teacher written in about 1971/2. Can find nothing about him online but Reeve's piece may revive memories.

JOHN FELGATE

John C. Felgate I find now lives in Australia. I wonder why. Has he a son or daughter, brother or sister already out there who made him decide to leave his numerous friends, acquaintances and relatives in England where he was so popular and respected?
I doubt whether I shall ever know. That question, however, is not very significant. What is important to me is the fact that the memory of John (rarely Called Jack) always brings to mind many happy days together at dinners, reunions, conferences, not to mention one afternoon some years ago when he called unexpectedly at my bungalow in Kingskerswell, and left a note informing me where I could locate him at Newton Abbot. I found him, and that reminiscent happy evening was the last time we met.
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The Tragedy of Copped Hall

The effects of the First World War were wide and long lasting, not just for those who were directly involved in it, one way or another , but for the architectural heritage of Britain. The deaths of so many sons of the upper class meant that estates that had been run so successfully up to 1914 were plunged into uncertainty. Great mansions were sold off or demolished. A different fate befell one great house and its astonishing gardens in Essex, as some clippings found among the papers of the late Peter Haining, who must have passed the site regularly on his route to and from his Essex home, tell.

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Favourite London Market Places 2

Farringdon Road Book Stalls

The second and last part of Bill Lofts article (possibly unpublished) about London markets. This mainly deals with his search for books, comics and 'boy's books.' Loft's prose style is not exactly Nabokov but his enthusiasm and tireless research carries it along…there is much online about the dealer turned publisher Gerald Swan. Bill gives an affectionate portrait of him..

But easily the main attraction to me was the second-hand bookstall where I used to exchange my comics, and later boys papers. The proprietor was a Gerald Swan, later to become quite a famous publisher in our field of cheap paperback novels, comics, and boys papers, as well as Annuals which he named 'Albums'. These 'Swan Albums' were priced at 3/6d each - printed on the cover, but were sold at a shilling, when he probably still made a big profit on them. Mr Swan was really an extraordinary dressed man to be in charge of a wooden shabby bookstall.

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Favourite London Market Places 1

Portobello Road circa 1970
(from the Library Time Machine)

From the Peter Haining papers, this typed manuscript by the great researcher and expert on British comics and periodicals W.O.G. ('Bill') Lofts (1923-1997). It is from the early 1970s and is slightly politically incorrect. Autre temps etc., The second part deals with Bill's quest for second hand books at these markets and here his taste is distinctly old fashioned. A vanished world.

My Favourite London Market Places.

I should think that most collectors, or at least those as youngsters in pre-Second World War days, would remember with some affection their local market place. In all probability this was where they bought or exchanged their comics and later Old Boys papers at a second-hand bookstall. This to supplement their regular weekly favourite ordered from the newsagent.

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar

A submission from one Grace (many thanks) about a rare children's book. This is more the kind of thing we used to do at Bookride but it contains a little new info. The 'point' on the book is that a true first edition (World Publishing, USA 1969) must have a full number line on the copyright page, “1 2 3 4 5 73 72 71 70 69″.The back cover should have ‘A3450′ on the bottom right. A d/w might turbo-charge it into $10000…on the other hand it may be a little vieux chapeau in the rapidly changing world of children's book collecting and it would be interesting to see if this one sells for a significant sum sans jacket… 1stedition.net go on exhaustively about every aspect of the book's collectability. Grace writes:

My husband and I have had a strong interest in antique and collectible books, always on the look out for something unusual. We've been impressed with the value of a book that we came across on more than occasion. But, the last place we expected to come across a rare book was among our kids' extensive library.

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Bill Lofts – the journey of a collector and researcher

More material from the Haining archive, this by his friend and colleague W.O.G. ('Bill') Lofts. Some of it is covered by Bill's piece on market places. As a researcher pre-internet he haunted the British Museum and saw himself as a kind of knowledge sleuth (hence the title).

INVESTIGATIONS UNLIMITED
by W.O.G. LOFTS

Like most normal children I started reading the coloured nursery comics at an early age: 'Chicks Own' and 'Tiny Tots', for example. With their hyphenated script underneath they helped us a great deal in learning to read. W. Howard Baker recently - and without any prompting from me related how it taught him to read in his home in Cork, Ireland. Later I went on to the older, 'Rainbow', 'Tiger Tim's Weekly' category, and later still to the black and white comics such as 'Chips’, 'Comic Cuts', 'Larks', 'Jester' and 'Funny Wonder'. I think my favourite was 'Larks'. That had Dad Walker on the front page, and was drawn by Bert Brown whom I was to meet many decades later, and whose originals I greatly treasure.

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A Dealer’s Tale

In a recent posting Quinney's we reprinted Thomas Rohan's advice to antique collectors. In this short work Don't: some concise and useful hints for the collector. Thomas Rohan Bournemouth, [1933] he also finds space to include the following dealer's tale. Dealers are fond of anecdotes, mostly of amazing finds and amazing bargains and mark ups ( '..found it in a junk shop for £5, Sothebys later sold it for £45000..' etc.,) but this a little different from the usual 'I had it away' story and even has elements of myth and legend...

Extracts from a Talk I gave to the Alton Society

Many incidents I can tell from the niches of my memory relating to beautiful things. One extraordinary tale I will tell relating to a bureau bookcase. This happened some years before I became a dealer. I was in the habit of visiting various towns in Kent and Surrey during the week-ends. I always was on the look out to see beautiful things, and if I stayed in a town I always enquired of any place where antique furniture was housed - this, you must remember was nearly fifty years ago, before the country was scoured for the voracious American. While staying at a cathedral town in Kent, I was told of a farmhouse about two miles out, stocked with, as it was called, "old stuff". The place was called Priestly's Farm, an old Georgian white house on the main road, with barns and out houses: I could not miss it. I was further told that Joe Priestly was a very genial man. I certainly did find him that: he was a typical yeoman farmer of florid face and sandy whiskers and hair. He gave me a cordial welcome to look at his old furniture: some of it had been there for four generations. I certainly was struck with a set of fine Chippendale chairs, six, and two carving chairs, and a fine bureau bookcase. All the furniture was in its original state, the old mellow colour. I was admiring the bureau bookcase, and saying how I should like to possess it. the farmer smiled and shook his head. "Not all the money you could mention could buy that piece from me. The reason I will tell you, sir, if you will sit down. Have a glass of my cider?" He went out and brought in a jug of cider and two glasses, and we say down. This is his story: -

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A Ship’s Library – Kinfauns Castle

Kinfauns Castle (Ship's Nostalgia site)

Found - a list of the entire inventory of a ship's library - Donald Currie & Co's Royal Mail Steamer "Kinfauns Castle"(South African Service). An interesting list, possibly intended to be comprehensive. There is a curious amount of William Black, then at his height, a sort of Victorian Dan Brown (so popular that in America his works were bootlegged.) Likewise there are 3 works of Norman Macleod, editor of the immensely successful Good Words and now so forgotten than he is not even known for being forgotten - although Sutherland covers him well in The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. He is part of a slight Scottish bias to these books (the list was printed by David Bryce & Son, Glasgow.) There is little for children, not many thrillers and not a lot of humour, although Twain and Brett Harte both make the list. Conspicuous by their absence are Trollope, Gibbon, Poe, Milton, Fielding, Wilkie Collins, Swinburne and R.L. Stevenson. Children had to make do with Froggy's Little Brother and possibly German Popular Stories. There is very little religion and no Holy Bible, possibly shipping magnate Donald Currie thought there was enough of that on land or that most people would have a bible if they needed one. The Kinfauns Castle started sailing in 1879 and this is probably from early in its life (it seems to have still been afloat in the late 1920s.) The list was pasted into book 10 Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship, attractively bound in full green leather lettered gilt at the spine with the words 'Castle Packets' at the foot -possible all the library was bound thus..

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Antique Collecting advice from Quinney

Found- a small, rare pamphlet Don't: some concise and useful hints for the collector by Thomas Rohan (Bournemouth: A. Rohan, 1933). Rohan was a dealer in antiques and wrote many books on the subject (Old Beautiful, Confessions of a Dealer etc.,) He is said to be the original of Quinney the antique dealer hero of the novel and play (and movie) Quinney's by H.A. Vachell. At one point there were 5 antique shops in Britain called Quinney's and there is still at least one. His hints for collectors are still of use:

DON'T.

So many just for the want of thought go wrong in collecting, commiseration is of little help, after the event, so I thought just a few concise words of advice, set forth in brief paragraphs would be of help. Recently a gentleman said to me, 'I shall never forget what you said at your first talk to the Alton Art Society - never purchase anything however old it is, if it has not been beautifully made - Age will not add value to bad craftsmanship.' I suppose I have made this remark hundreds of times.

DON'T buy anything unless you can always live with it.

DON'T be in a hurry to purchase anything, however pleasing momentarily to the eye - meticulously examine the article whether it be furniture, china or glass.

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G. K. Chesterton on trade

Chesterton is a bit rough on trade and traders - in The Universe According to G. K. Chesterton: A Dictionary of the Mad Mundane and Metaphysical (a posthumous compilation by Dale Ahlquist published by Dover Inc., 2011) he defines the verb 'trade' thus:'To buy things for less than their worth and sell them for more than their worth.' Harsh but fair - but now slightly inaccurate, in these straitened times when prices are so easily checked, the person asking more than true value (whatever that is!) may find few takers. As an old trader once quipped: 'the right price is the wrong price…'

On traders themselves GKC seems to have it about right:

Men who cannot do anything else except exchange; who have not the wits or the force or fancy or freedom of mind or the humour and patience to bring anything into existence; who can only barter and bargain and generally cheat, with the things that manlier men have made.

The world of eBay and the car boot sale foreseen...He wrote this in GK's Weekly in 1933.